Alone and Afraid in Afghanistan

Judged by world events as they're unfolding, the arrest of Yvonne Ridley doesn't seem to matter much. Yvonne Ridley is an experienced reporter for one of Britain's Sunday newspapers. She's also mother to nine year old Daisy, who is at school in the North of England. Yvonne's been working in Islamabad, Pakistan, for the last few weeks, applying for a visa to visit neighbouring Afghanistan. What she wanted to do was to report for her readers on the estimated eight million starving Afghan refugees. She wanted to be an eyewitness. But she couldn't get there.

The Taliban wouldn't give her permission to enter the country, so she disguised herself and together with a couple of guides, she crossed the border into Afghanistan.

Given the tensions in the region, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would discover her. And, sure enough, on Friday, Yvonne Ridley was arrested by the Talliban Police near the city of Jalalibad. And she's being charged with illegally entering the country. There were fears that she would also be charged with spying. The hope now is that, even in as volatile a country as Afghanistan, a prison sentence is likely to be the worst she can expect. But as the world moves ever faster towards some form of military conflict, I can't imagine a worse time to be an English woman in an Afghan jail.

To those people who say that she was crazy and irresponsible ... maybe they're right. But Yvonne follows the tradition of the best in journalism down the years. Actions like hers have always been the only way we get real facts into our newspapers or onto our TV screens. So, when you see the next pictures from inside Afghanistan on the Evening News, spare a thought for Yvonne Ridley, alone and afraid in the most dangerous country in the world.